


Closing Doors

by mariusgaaazzh



Series: Our Best Misgivings [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Domesticity, Emotional Baggage, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Depression, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Unreliable Narrator, ghosts of various kinds, obikaka lurking on the sidelines
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-05-24 09:14:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14951840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariusgaaazzh/pseuds/mariusgaaazzh
Summary: Sometimes you need to take a step back to move forward. Or how Hatake Kakashi becomes the Hokage he didn't think he could be.(Kakayama Week 2018 Day 4: After the War. In which things are bleak, and no one can deal with their emotions. But the ending is worth the angst.)In the same continuity as Breaking Patterns, but feel free to read on its own.





	1. Chapter 1

The stupor felt like electricity and tasted like steel.  
  
Anything which was not the War was irrelevant, and fell into the darkening periphery of Kakashi’s vision as he went between the tents and barracks, vaguely aware of shapes into which things and people folded themselves in the organized chaos of the camp.

This was not the ease of the battlefield, where he was enveloped by a thunderous calm, and everything which was not the objective was fog and rain in his way, but the hectic world of the after, where the colors always seemed too bright and sounds - too dissonant. The air smelled of blood, and antiseptics, and that particular kind of despair which only clings to the hospitals, even makeshift ones.

The battle was won, but the aftermath of it kept pulsing in the air, and itching under his skin. He could sense the flows of chakra. The dull echoes of the enormous energies Naruto and Sasuke brought into the world, the ripples of the Uchiha genjutsu. The healing wards circling through the hands of the medic-nin, the jolts of curriers departing and arriving, the mass of Tactical in the distance.

In a spike of paranoia, Kakashi wondered how he might appear to a sensor: broken, uneven, with the sharp shards of power as a memory of the mangekyo, and pitches of darkness where his chakra pathways were probably burnt to hell. He ran so dry he could feel the brittleness of it against his bones, and in the cold which settled in the tips of his fingers.

 _Don’t_ , he once again forced his attention outwards, shaking off the fog of the fatigue. If he paused now, he might not be able to keep going. But the camp didn’t give him the chance to, for which he was thankful. _Hatake-taicho_ was always in the air somewhere, in the sighs of the wounded, the alert of the ground staff, hands on his shoulder which were supposed to be a reassurance.

Kakashi followed the most urgent call, of a confused Mist ensign running from the Tactical with a clipboard, and hoped that he could actually be of use. The War, brutal as it was, had been won. And his stunt as a Commander would be over with the last echoes of it. Gods knew, he would take all the mercies given to him, even he couldn't quite tell faces apart at this point.

Within all reason, Kakashi should have crashed a long time ago - from chakra exhaustion, a poorly stitched up hole in his side, or from the simple inability to carry all the rage, pain, and grief of the day. But reason stopped being applicable somewhere around the time when the undead rose from their graves, and judged the living for the crimes all thought were buried with them. Somewhere around Obito.

It could have not been more than eight hours, but they felt like eight years - with the revelations he wasn't sure he was ready to understand, the great Tailed Beasts, and the dimension-jumping madness. And Kakashi did not only have to fight for his Kage, or for his own honor, or the very fate of the world, but he had to stand in battle with or against his dead, whose faces he barely trusted himself to remember.

In the end, it had all withered down to a familiar sense of guilt.

He had not done enough. He never had. And it was that easy - to count the times where he was not there, and couldn’t save all the people he had to save. Guilt was a rotten thing - it trapped his mind in circles he could not escape, and stole his ability to see the future. That much he had learned. But now was not the time to be a better person, when others were relying on his presence and his words.

Kakashi knew guilt, and he leaned into its hold like into a tired embrace, or a familiar set of armor. It was his mechanism and his shield, the thing which kept him moving. And he allowed it to. Because, through that, he could do better for those in his charge.

There was his father, whom he dishonored by being ashamed, Minato-sensei, to whom he did not listen, Rin, who died by his hand, and his students, for each of whom he was not enough. And _Obito_ \- the wound on his chest seemed to burst in pain. He could not think of this yet. 

Kakashi looked up, to the worried rattling of the ensign. There was yet another logistics mishap he had to look over.

The memory of the battlefield twisted like a knife in his gut, right over the actual flesh wound. And for a moment he had to shut his eyes. And yet he drank power from it.

There was just one name he couldn’t bring himself to think of.

 

+

He was not avoiding this. He wasn't.

For weeks - he just wasn't thinking. His mind refused to frame another loss, so he pushed it aside, a missing in action on the official casualty lists. It was something he could not _allow_ himself to think of, outside of hierarchies of command and his duties.

The Mizukage and Kazekage were conscious, the others were stable, all of the daimyos were accounted for, special jonin traveling with them - so the continent’s politics would not go to hell on his watch. Sakura was keeping an eye on those two idiots, Gai was in surgery, casualties from all villages did not rise past twenty-three present, and the stream of reports from the medical was reassuring.

The name was on the hastily put together list of the Leaf’s ANBU involved in the battle, on the clipboard the ensign shoved into his hands, to verify in Lady Tsunade’s absence.

  _\- codename Tenzo, codename Yamato_.

There were other names on the list. A few dozen - most of whom he knew, even if they came in after he left active service. But they might have as well been blank, because everything before his eyes exploded in white.

He shoved the clipboard into the ensign’s hand. The instinct, the drive to protect what was his, was choking him, driving driving into a mad rush, and Kakashi had to make an effort not to run into people, or break into a sprint. Or maybe it was the part of him which still felt things outside of guilt, or duty. The one which wanted to be called by his given name.

He ignored the questions of the nursing staff, navigating the rows of the hospital cots for those _outside of immediate danger_ , and -

He stood still.

Hooked up to glucose and antibiotics, Tenzo was alive. In one piece. Maybe even fine.

No, definitely not fine. Dry, papery skin. Bags under his eyes deeper than usual. Weeks of chakra depletion would do that to you. And the Zetsu army sucked him nearly dry.

Kakashi tried not to stare at Tenzo’s bandaged forearms, where the traces of a complicated vegetative system which _grew_ out of him were still visible, and skin became sapwood, and blood and veins melded into xylem and phloem, as life itself was seeped out of him by the enemy.

He could not make himself think of what was under the sheets.

“Hey.” Kakashi said instead, quietly, at an off chance that Tenzo might not be sleeping. But his voice was too dry and too hollow even with that hope. And he kicked himself for it. This was not his time to be weak.

But slowly, the brown eyes opened, and met his. And they were just as bright.

And Kakashi let out his worst fears out with a sigh, as he collapsed on the side of Tenzo’s cot. The smoldering, hot feeling of relief rose in his chest, and he thought he could disintegrate only to let it loose. But quickly, it bloomed into a stab of guilt. He brought this on. He wasn't fast enough.  
  
A panic of loss danced in him, looping the familiar circles. The same cycle of names and memories, which lead to an inevitable list of names. And he was not ready to add another one to it. The mere possibility of it threw him out of his own mind.

“Hey.” Kakashi heard, through the beating of blood in his ears, and felt a hand reach out, and wrap loosely around his fingers. “I’ll sleep it off.”

He had to say something, Kakashi knew. Something reassuring. Something right. But he couldn’t make himself look up from a hand which sat so rightly and in his. So he missed the mark again.

“The medic was telling me your wayward kids saved the day?” Tenzo asked.

“Yeah.” He sighed, and felt a small smile spread on his face, despite himself. “Yeah. Imagine that.”

This was the easiest way to frame what happened. An easy way, which did not fit everything everything into the picture, and was so far away from justice.He will take that himself for now.

Especially, as he could hear the smile in Tenzo’s voice. “.. told you they’ll do good.”

And Kakashi couldn't say anything, because he did not trust whatever was building up in his throat. This was selfish, he told himself, to somehow find strength in this, even when he himself had nothing to offer. And he cursed every bone in his body, when he couldn't tell Tenzo how much he missed him, or how afraid he was. And just sat there, dizzy from chakra depletion, blood loss, and grief, clasping a hand over the washed-out hospital sheets.

“I’m sorry.” He tried, and gathered the shreds of his courage to look Tenzo in the eye.

And even at his state, Tenzo managed to give him a look clearly telling him to shut up. “Yeah I figured you would be.”

And this was so normal, and fell so neatly in the neatly carved space between them, that Kakashi couldn’t keep back a chuckle, and ran his thumb over Tenzo’s palm, which had all the same calluses, and was just as dry and broad as he remembered.

Silence cradled them for a bit, until Tenzo shifted once more to get the most out of his presence, between the space they had, the crumpled sheets, and Kakashi’s torn up uniform.

“Your hands are cold.” Tenzo nodded weakly to his side, where an untouched field ration sat. “Have a juice pack.”

It shook Kakashi to the core, just how much love we still have to give to others, even when we ourselves are nearly at the brink.  And he could feel himself smiling so hard sides of his face hurt. “I am so glad to see you.”

“Your eyes…” Tenzo spoke, just noticing something. “This is not the sharingan.”

“No.” Kakashi closed and opened them. “It's how it is now.”

The left one still felt a bit raw, if only from how much he kept that socket covered, but he could feel no difference in his sight.

“I like it.” Tenzo considered him for a moment. “They’re pretty.”

“Yours are too.”

This was close to the top of stupidest things he ever said, but Tenzo laughed. It was a weak, whispy sound, but Kakashi knew it to be true, which was all that mattered.

“Don't go, won't you?” Tenzo asked.

“Won't.” Kakashi answered, even as he knew it was a promise he would have to break. More than anything, he wanted climb into that narrow cot next to him, and stay there, until the world would stop its mad rush around them, until he would stop bleeding.

But he was the Commander, and it was not his time to rest. Kakashi’s obligations held him together like a crass metal frame. Nurses knew better than to bother them, and when Tenzo fell asleep, and he tore himself up from whatever semi-oblivion he started falling into, crooked up on the side of the of the cot, and went back out into the busy camp of the victorious.

There were things to be managed, and orders given, and someone was calling on him - _Hatake-taicho_.

 

+

And then Kakashi himself passed out.

It was one of the lulls in the camp’s pace, when he was surrounded by the busy, murmuring silence of people going on about their businesses, when he realized that standing wasn't exactly worth it. Or keeping his eyes open, for that matter. So he crashed on a pile of empty supply crates which someone left unmoved by the tents wall. And he didn't care how crude it was, because he couldn’t exactly tell where his body began or ended from sheer exhaustion.

On the fringe of consciousness, he felt that someone threw a blanket over him. A standard issue, prickly one from Sand. And as he wrapped himself tighter in the sharp wool, scrapping for its warmth, his last feeling was gratitude.

The War was done with. And there was peace.

And yet, the echoes of the past days punctured sleep like thunderclaps.


	2. Chapter 2

It had been a week since shinobi came home, and the Konoha streets were still learning how to be loud - with the opening shops, and the kids playing on the corners, and people running their errands or returning from patrols.

The roads still weren't paved, and the dust bunnies were dancing in the air, all soft golden flickers.

Kakashi felt himself breath in fully, and raise his head to the sun, the greatest dust bunny of them all. It hit his eyes mercilessly. But at least it wasn’t a threat, and wasn’t  going to turn into an enormous eye of the Moon Goddess and devour the world.

“Hey, senpai.”

Kakashi blinked at the light, and fought the urge to rub his left eye, a now useless habit.

“Give me the bag.” Tenzo pulled the standard issue thing stuffed with hospital belongings off his shoulder, and easily hauled it over his own.

“Ah.” Kakashi said, because he had to say something.

The bag was a subject of an argument, which was really a non-argument, but something they enjoyed sharing, as Tenzo was finally discharged, and they could look into each other’s eye on even ground, without the confines of beeping monitors and doctors’ rounds.

So Tenzo was refusing help with his bag.

But Kakashi was the first to grab it, so there wasn’t point in handing it over.

 _Alright_ , Tenzo had said, in the way which didn’t mean alright at all, but rather that this choice would come back to Hatake’s life.

And then, Kakashi smiled.

Now, he just blinked again, trying to wish away the phantom itch behind his eyeball. This should not be quite happening, but there was a lot be be said about the patterns which remain, even as the pain they formed around should be gone.

The sun shone on the streets of Konoha, but Kakashi didn't recognize them. This wasn't what he was used to, in the simplest, mechanical ways of what his body remembered, and what his senses said was safe.

They were alien, different from those he grew up on, and yet following their path. And between the memory and recognition, there hid a shadow.

And his instinct was to follow it, and to see where it would go - until he was pulled out from the stream of his thoughts, by a familiar presence behind him, by the knowledge that he was in someone’s eye.

He moved his shoulder.

“Thought I saw someone.”

“Come on.” Tenzo grabbed him by the elbow. “Lets get home.”

And Kakashi did his best to shake the shadow off.

He hated the talk of it. Of all the blood that sat on his hands, and the people he had lost, and how he would have to leave the village walls every other night. Words were shells, which could be conveniently filled and emptied of meaning, and it was not in them that the darkness sat.

Words were not there, when all his senses would suddenly go into high alert whenever he would enter an unfamiliar room, or how he always had to count the exists and keep an eye on them before he fell asleep. Or now, the way he treated every turn as if it hid a potential threat. And how he, subconsciously, was always a step ahead. Even as the sun was shining.

It were the smallest things, which had put him slightly at an edge towards the world into which he walked out to do their groceries.

And now he was seeing things.

It wasn't the first time when he couldn't tell apart what was real, or what was in his head. Or when he felt like there were gaps in his memory, and had to sit up on his bed at night, and painstakingly connect the threads of what had been to what is now, staring at the blank wall in front of him.

But had gotten worse in the past few days, as he was waiting for Tenzo to be out of the hospital. Not necessarily worse than it had been, but enough for him to recognize it as a thing returning, and stuff it in the back of his mind. He didn't want to think about himself. It was easier that way.

Tenzo was telling him about how his debrief with the Intelligence went, right before the discharge. He was technically missing in action the entire time, and then a confirmed enemy hostage - so there was a lot of repetitive questioning he had to go through, to make sure he wasn’t a ticking bomb of some sort.

And Kakashi was half-listening, half- soaking in the normality of it all, rolling his eyes at the appropriate places. No one formally revoked his Commander status - whatever that meant after the Allied Forces went back to being Mist, Sand, Cloud, Stone, and Leaf - so they weren’t compromising the village security. And they were together, which was a pleasant change.

Because, first, they didn’t know when Tenzo would be out.

Tsunade-sama did want to monitor him for a few days. Mokuton, it appeared, had an amazing regenerative quality, but she wasn’t sure if it would heal its own perturbation.

And Kakashi did his best not to give away his restlessness, as he was sorting clauses newly added to the peace treaties between the villages.

Tsunade did not send him beyond the walls with any of the tactical teams, but for some reason kept him around,  feeding him trivia about the developing politics. But he was grateful for that, because it allowed him for the visits.

He dropped by once a day or so, dodging all the respectful greetings of the recovering nin, mostly to see how Tenzo and Gai started a go championship that now half of the hospital was betting on, and the other half was still being a good sport not to rat them out to the nurses.

They got bored from sitting around very quickly.

 

+

The apartment greeted them with a dark, open maw of the front door. And they both stood frozen in the hallway, looking at the place which they should know, and not recognizing it, just as Kakashi struggled to recognize who exactly they were before they left it.

Pein’s attack took away their entire building block, and the old house of his father.

The cookware, the books, all small things which compose a life, he realized, were erased in a brilliant flash of white. As well as the Hatake clan heirlooms - but he couldn't bring himself to care about those that much.

And what they got was a room in one of the temporary barracks of the rebuilding Konoha. And they hastily threw some blankets on the bed and took out a few personal keepsakes that survived in their pockets.

Right before the War broke out, the room turned into an apartment - the same one bedroom, but now with a balcony and a larger kitchen. Someone seemed to have bent - quite literally - the construction plans for that.

And then when Tenzo was gone, Kakashi could not bring himself to care how the place where he slept looked like.

He did his best to put it together into a semblance of a welcome, which mostly concluded in throwing down a cheery doormat and making sure that the floors were impeccably clean.

But simply following the other’s gaze, he realized what he had missed.  

Cut off from Tenzo’s chakra, the plants could not sustain themselves, and Kakashi honestly had no idea how to water them properly. And now the fig leaf palm stood sadly in the corner, its yellowish leaves hanging low.

With regret cutting through his motion, Tenzo ran his fingers over the near-dead trunk.

“Shit.”

And in the angle of his shoulders, in the dip of his voice, Kakashi saw what he was missing the entire time. What had him worried, even though he would not fully admit it. Because he hated words. But this one was sadness.

No pain endured disappears into nothing. It always leaves a mark. Bleeds into the future, and mixes up the past.  

“That's how winning a war feels like?”

Tenzo turned to him, wrinkling his brow in a nearly childlike confusion.

And Kakashi wanted to howl.

Even after all of the years slid by, Tenzo still looked at him for answers.

And this one, he knew. He had won too fucking many. And could not lie to him.

“Yes.”

And Tenzo froze. And stared at something, past the withered plant, that only he had seen. A ghost of his own, perhaps.

And Kakashi heart said _no_. As it had time after time, in a tiered, well-known defiance, which was as stubborn and sure as its own beat.

 _No_ , he would not have this, and the darkness was not finite, and there were things which were right, and good, and just, and he would not see them crumble, just because right now it was so fucking hard.

He reached out for Tenzo’s hand, like he would in the dark, both confidently and blindly, with the kind of care and ease which comes from time innumerable spent by each other’s side. He ran his fingers up the uniform sleeve, kindly bringing him back, into the touch, and looked up into the brown eyes.

And then Kakashi was kissed, measuredly and surely.

And he gave into it, closing his eyes, allowing Tenzo to press him against the doorframe, to have a strong hand cup his jaw. This was the greatest affirmation. In how practiced was the angle under which their bodies came together. In how their mouths met.

He did not notice how it happened, between the years, that kissing Tenzo became a habit, one of the loops his body and mind dragged him through and without which they refused to function  - like cigarettes, or the morning tea.

And it felt good, and it felt right, and it felt familiar in a way that told him that maybe not everything inside of him was rotten to the bone.

Kakashi missed this. Being home again.

 

+

There was knock on the door.

A polite, but urgent one. Which could be an old lady next door, whose dog had gone missing, or a whatever shinobi life insurance agent who hadn’t yet had it down what a poor deal they were.

Truly bad news usually invited themselves in.

So Kakashi did not want to give it thought, whatever it was. He pulled on the fabric of Tenzo’s shirt, bringing him closer, holding him in place.

And Tenzo seemed to agree, that with whoever it was, they could fucking come back in a few hours, will they try to catch up on all the time they had lost just a bit.

The knocking repeated itself, accompanied by an agitated chakra flare, which was no grandma.

Tenzo pulled back, serious expression falling over the too-bright eyes, and cheeks splashed with blush. Kakashi could practically see him calculate all the options, and come to a one solid  conclusion in his mind. He loved him for it.

 _You or me?_  was the silent question between them. And Kakashi rolled his eyes, pretending to faint like a damsel, for which he received a kick in the shin, and smiled, and then was kissed again, which made this bearable - to pull his mask up, and go deal with whatever life which would not leave them alone.

 

+

It was Sasuke.

And Kakashi had to resist a very material urge to close and open the door again, to make sure that he wasn’t seeing things, or that this wasn’t another of Naruto’s takes on a practical joke.

He was still not used to seeing his student.

But the kid stood before him. Tall, and dark-haired, and lanky, and stupidly thin despite the range he had with a sword. Automatically, Kakashi wondered if he was eating alright.

The haunting resemblance to his older brother, so prominent when he was younger, had now waned. But then again, Sasuke was now older than he ever remembered Itachi proper, series of the Akatsuki run-ins no more than a blood-red blur.

“Kakashi-sensei.”

Hatake blinked. He realized he was staring.

Sasuke shifted between his feet, his entire posture trying to conceal itself, as he felt as uncomfortable as he could, standing in front of Kakashi’s doorway, and then looked up at him burning dark eyes.

“Sorry to bother you.”

“You did.”

“I.. Sakura told me where to find you-”

Kakashi was waiting.

The pause was stretching, as Sasuke was struggling with his words.

“Will you..” Oh, so that’s what it was. The kid was nearly dying from shame. “Co-sign on my lease?”

“Hard to find a landlord who would lease to a war criminal, ah?” He leaned against the doorframe, pushing hands into his pockets. To see where this will go.

Sasuke kept looking him in the eye, in silent confirmation. And it was a testament to the kid’s desperation that he didn't storm off yet. Kakashi certainly would have.

Wait, fuck. This meant he wasn't doing this right.

Hatake stared him down - which wasn’t that easy of a thing to do anymore, given that they were nearly the same height. However, having two eyes, Kakashi found, took away from his unfazed expression, but added to his stern one. “Of course I will.”

Sasuke stared at him back, now in surprise rather than with stubbornness.

And Hatake wanted to smash something.

“Just get me the paperwork.”

Sasuke nodded, probably too taken aback to produce a thank you. And disappeared in a whirlwind of leaves. Kakashi could barely feel his chakra jump between the rooftops. And sighed.

He knew he was bad, but that bad?

Then again, Sasuke was so much harder than the other three. Than nearly anyone.

 _Of course_. He knew he should have said. _I will sign your stupid papers_. _Because you are my charge, and I love you - and I would still love you no matter what you did against the Leaf._

 

+

Tenzo was eavesdropping from the kitchen. Judging by the glass of whiskey in his hand, he was not impressed.

Kakashi wanted to say something about drinking while on meds, but pot - kettle.

“Don’t.” He pleaded instead, and bumped his head against the cool surface of the fridge. It was always running hot. Should start importing nicer ones from Mist, since they’re friends now.

“Wasn't going to.” Tenzo shrugged. “Should I be getting the door next time?”

“He stabbed you, remember?” Kakashi said, in defense of the inexcusable, and in an excuse he shouldn’t be making. He knew the scar, and it was one of those things which drove him up the wall and out of his skin.

Admitting that you love people in your life who are not dead was one thing, learning how reconcile all of that was another.

“Sure.” Tenzo shrugged again, stirring his whiskey. Odd. He usually liked it on rocks. “He was with Sakura when she was making rounds the other day - and when she stopped by to say hi, he just kept staring at me from the hallway like saw a ghost.”

Kakashi snorted, making effort not to slide down the fridge, and just sit there on the kitchen floor. “We’ll need to work on that.”

Maybe Tenzo was just trying to keep his hands busy. Maybe they were shaking just a bit.

Everything needed work right now.

If the War did one thing - beyond hundreds of dead, and thousands of wounded - it forced the shinobi world to face itself, and all the previously circumvented cracks in their lives were now gaping cavities, from which the dead were looking.

Obito.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was aiming for weekly updates - but they probably will be a bit more spread out than that. I severely underestimated the amount of traveling that's happening this summer. But it's all drafter out - so sit tight, guys.
> 
> also, just to be clear. no sasusaku is happening. narusasu is.


	3. Chapter 3

“You sure you’re getting back to the rosters?”

Tenzo looked at him with a spark of impatience.

“Yes.”

Unease darted between them and spread through the room like static, and Kakashi bit his tongue. All of the words he had were tired anyways, and felt like sand in his mouth. He fell against the doorway with a sigh.

Only a few days passed since the official hospital discharge - sunlit and warm, full of everything and nothing. And yet in the end, they sat prickly and uneasy, like a heavy woolen blanket thrown over the living room’s couch. He was trying and failing and remember how the hand-woven monstrocity settled so firmly in their flat. It held an uncertain kind of brownish-grey, and looked worn and faded even when he pulled it out of the relief donation pile after Pein’s attack.

But staring down a stain in the blanket’s left corner did not take away from the reality of an ANBU gear bag open wide on the table. Or a cat’s face of white porcelain under Tenzo’s hand, hollow sockets lined with red. And the things that mask had seen, which clung to the polished surface like tar.

Kakashi looked away again.  He could not tell Tenzo not to go. But the possessive pull, a sense of wrongness in him did not quiet. And did not allow him to stay calm.

And Tenzo felt it. Kakashi read it in his straight back, and in the impatient hands, which carried too much energy as they checked the kunai and the shuriken scroll. Hands which wanted to do anything but rest.

He also made an effort to not look Kakashi in the eye.

It would crash their tentative balance, between a yes and a no, where Kakashi could not hold him back, but he also could simply go. That would feel too much like leaving.

That was the conundrum between them. The ambiguity which tied them in such intricate ways now felt like a burden to untangle. It had been six years, give or take. And lying to the other only felt like robbing yourself of the truth. Each of them was a whole, but they nearly unlearnt how to be separate.

Kakashi kept asking himself, why did they allow this to happen, and how did they make it last. He didn't feel much older since they first moved together - or wiser, in that case. Maybe a little less sharp along the edges, and with a little more patience to spare.

And there was Tenzo.

Who knew him, like Kakashi didn't think he would allow anyone to. Who grew under his skin with all of his leafs, and branches, and vines, and a habit to wake up seven minutes before the alarm. Who listened, and trusted, and stood his ground. And that was all his. Sometimes Kakashi caught himself reaching in the back of his mind, and not finding a shred of darkness there, enveloped in moments of striking normality, and wondered if that is how it is supposed to feel like. That this is what people without dozens of S-ranks do.

But this was not one of those moments.

Not with how Tenzo picked up the mask, tracing the side of cat’s round face. Not with the way he rolled his shoulders in unease and  finally turned around. Brown eyes pinned Kakashi down.

“I got caught.”

This was where he had to back off, Kakashi recognized. Because Tenzo’s face could as well be a face of a stranger. And his voice came clearly, but was not fully its own.

There was always a point, with being a shinobi, after which there could be no ‘us’, no ‘you’, or even ‘I’. But only the buzz of chakra on fingertips, waning hours of the night left to run the mission, and an elusive thing called honor. When you are in the field, when you got _caught_ , most of the time there is no extraction. They all knew that. It was a truth as self-evident as gravel under their feet, or the tall crowns of trees outside Konoha. And they walked towards it with open eyes.

Got _caught_. Kakashi had no issue applying it to himself. He was fully prepared to bleed out with a  gut torn, behind a godforsaken rock somewhere deep in hostile territory. Or to detonate a paper bomb, if he saw an enemy coming. But he would never leave a soldier behind. This was not he believed in. And not what he taught his kids.

He briefly wondered if there were a contradiction, as he carefully studied Tenzo’s face.

He had it memorized, down to the tiniest detail. A nearly invisible scar on the right cheek. A strong curve of the jaw. Big, attentive eyes set wide apart, which gave them that surprised expression. When Tenzo was gone, Kakashi would lay at night, balancing between oblivion and exhaustion, and force himself to pull out every shard of memory he had. Because he could not forget him, like he could no longer recognize Rin’s voice. He had to remember.

And now Tenzo was before him, alive, despite all reason and everything Kakashi came to learn. With the damn cat’s mask in his hands, and a conviction that he owed Konoha something because he did not _die_ for it. And Kakashi was struck through with grief, and guilt, and admiration, and love, and sorrow. And it all mixed within him into a thing he could neither speak of, nor reign in.

“I did this, and I do not remember most of it.” Tenzo spoke quietly and earnestly, as if trying to explain something very important to him, responding to what he must have seen in Kakashi’s face. Tenderness splashed in his eyes.

And Kakashi took in a sharp breath. And wanted to tell him, that no, he didn’t do it. That they made him to, trapped him underground and turned him into a machine without consciousness or choice. That Tenzo was the major intelligence leak. And a weapon turned against his own people. But he was still more than that. And he would repeat those words dozens of times, until they would become true, until Tenzo would believe them.

But Tenzo did not, not the first time, not all the others that followed. And Kakashi understood, as he continued to stand immobile and watch, as Tenzo was setting out to find himself another war. He understood to well, in fact. Because when you wake up from a darkness, you inevitably face the light of who you are. And have to live with that knowledge. There is no easy way out, no matter how unjust that is.

And that was what from which he hid behind the ANBU mask for years. And what drove Obito over the edge into Madara’s madness.

 +

The setting sun’s inquisitive eye peered through the shutters and threw long strips of molten gold on the floor.

Kakashi watched them extend through the full length of the room. And stared into fading light for as long as his two eyes would let him. The sun was red. Which meant that tomorrow would be a fine day, and Tenzo would travel safely. Which was good.

He shifted slightly, to settle more comfortably against the sunken springs and fat, monstrous pillows of their couch. For which he received a displeased huff, as Tenzo also had to move, to once again rest against his shoulder.

There was only a point to which they could argue. Or stand indifferent in front of each other on different ends of the room. If did not take them long. For Tenzo to drop whatever he was doing, and cross the cold space between them. And Kakashi did not notice how he himself took a step forward. Their time was too precious and too short. And it was the best to spend it doing absolutely nothing.

Kakashi tried to remember who would be on duty at the village gates tomorrow morning, who of the jonin were free to escort the ANBU squad to the borders, and all possible routes Team Ro could follow and the missions they could pursue. Past the burnt grounds and wild chakra flows of the recent battles, towards other lands, further to the west and south. Perhaps they would be after that technology for better fridges.

He smirked, and threw his head against the back of the couch.

“What?” Tenzo asked.

And Kakashi almost forgot he had to answer. So thrilled with how he could feel the question rise with a breath from Tenzo’s lungs, and take its ringing shape in the chest. The old woolen blanket hugged their shoulders, like the weakest fucking shield against everything in the world.

“Nothing.” He finally said, not taking his eyes from the sunset. Not sparing them from the brightness of it. “Just envisioning your future in industrial espionage.”

“You do not have the clearance.” Came after a short pause, with a slight uncertainty of a question.

Kakashi gave a laugh, light and easy, for which he received an elbow in the ribs. His time sitting in on meetings and sorting papers under Tsunade’s patronage was truly not wasted, if he could predict the Leaf’s plans so clearly. Or get on that Captain’s nerve Tenzo had within him.  

He could practically feel his smile in the settling darkness. It was one of those broad, everyday ones which made old ladies trust him with their groceries and something under Kakashi’s skin - burn. And he thought that they have spent enough time talking, and should move to other, even more pleasant things.

And so he slid on Tenzo’s lap, and had to press his lips to the corner of that smile, through the rough fabric of the mask. And a hand went around his waist, pulling him closer, and he sighed. And the mask was long hanging around his neck, and his own hands were on the broad shoulders, and Kakashi was trying to decide whether making it to the bedroom was worth it, but that required _thinking_. Until -

“Hey, Kakashi… Wait.”

He felt Tenzo go still with a sense of danger. And carefully moved away, following the palm pressed against his chest. Slowly, his fingers wrapped around the handle of a kunai stuffed between the pillows. He tried to read the surroundings with the sharingan, seeking the enemy in the clandestine ripples of space and time.

Only to realize that the eye was not there.

Tenzo had a haunted look. As if he were seeing through Kakashi, past the blanket and the couch, the cheap wallpaper and the walls of the flat. He was transfixed by something which weren't there, but what he saw in the absence of the departed sun.

“What is it?” Kakashi did not risk reaching out.

“Nothing. Just..” Tenzo ran a hand through his hair. And pulled on the small table lamp, which deluded the heavy greys of the room with its gentle orange light.

“Thought I saw something.”

“Ah.” Kakashi nodded, and allowed them a few moments of silence. A thing inside his chest was aching with dull, pulling pain. Tenzo was never unsettled by darkness before. It could not touch him.

“You know you can tell me.” He started then. “You probably even should.”

“Ah, yes.” Gentle mockery laced the even voice. “A shinobi is encouraged to share their experiences in the field, as long as they don’t violate the safety and security of the village.”

“I actually do have the clearance for this.”

“You’re pulling rank.”

“You’re pulling regulations.” Kakashi did his best not to sound hurt. “What am I left with?”

And Tenzo took in a sharp breath, as if about to speak. And Kakashi thought that yes, there could be truth, a way to undo the damage, not allow the dark shell he could feel being built to envelop them.

But instead Tenzo pressed a kiss to his cheek, right under the line of what the mask would hide.

“You’re scared.”

And Kakashi did not have to respond to what they both knew was true. Fear sat in him like a breath or a memory, caught him like a hook. One war does not dull the horror of another, and seeing people he loved die did not get easier through the years. So at times his fear would run so bright and sharp he didn’t remember anything else.

Tenzo was right.

He was terrible at losing. But that also meant that he was watchful of the signs.

The set of normalities that feel only slightly odd. Changes in spirit and sinking into routines. Distant eyes and too-certain hands. Kakashi had memorized them, twisted them on repeat in his head, knew them in himself.  Because the terrible thing is not when you crash, but when you slowly come at seams, and no longer recognize yourself in the mirror. Because Kakashi was now older than his father ever was, but Tenzo weren't.

And because Tenzo was of Root.

Because he could withstand much more, but for nearly the first time Kakashi thought about the cost. Because he got cleared by the ANBU psych, and smiled easily to their friends’ faces. Because things were not there, and Tenzo saw them. And tomorrow, he would leave.

The numbness you get from following orders and not remembering who you are, is a temporary one. Letting a part of yourself die is not healing.

“You’re changing the subject.”

Tenzo just huffed, but Kakashi could hear the echo of a smile in it. And he reached out, to lace their fingers. And Tenzo squeezed his hand.

They could not promise each other much more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ah hello i am once again in possession of functional internet, time and a laptop.


	4. Chapter 4

The most disgraceful thing about getting stuck with a desk job was that, like everyone else working on the Tower, Kakashi was developing an addiction to its disastrous coffee.

The scent of burned beans, along with that of aged paper, already sat deep in the freshly rebuild corridors laid with worn rugs of unrecognizable colors, on which dozens of feet walked each day: to have something reported, signed, verified. Perhaps, it never even left the place. And perhaps the bureaucracy and cheap brewing machines were just as essential to the survival of the Will of Fire, as bravery of Konoha’s shinobi.

Not that Kakashi had an opinion, one way or another.

He and the watery liquid found each other in a similar place of lukewarm indifference, and he had to issue downing it from a mug that unquestionably came along with the desk, paperwork, and decisions expected from him.

The mug had a chipped edge to it, right on the rim. Probably another of the things pulled from under the rubble. And Kakashi tried not dwell on that. But there was no way to hold the mug without feeling the crack in the porcelain, the deformity of it so obvious to the hands, eye and mouth.  As there was no way not to remember how much Tenzo complained about that coffee, when he was on Tower duty.

And that now Kakashi ran into Yugao more often than him.

And that he would raise his chin to the  ANBU masks of the Hokage guard in a greeting, and then come home to washed dishes, carefully folded laundry, a note of another A-rank outside the village walls, empty bed, and a waning moon.

Guilt twisted within him in new, enticing patterns.

Kakashi tried to imagine different possibilities. Where he could have said and done things differently. To shield them both from the grief. But always hit the blank wall of no, that was just who he were.And he wondered whether some things, which seemed so immovable and firm, were meant not to break, but rather whither away, chipped away piece by piece.

Without anyone even noticing.

+

He was losing track of grammar in diplomatic correspondence, when a fait tap on the window made him lift his eyes. Kakashi caught a blur of jonin greens darting up.

And thanked the gods for friends and their bad habits.

+

“We might be prepping for a delegation to Sand.” Raido shook his head, taking a drag of his cigarette.

The air was chilly and damp, the Tower’s roof still glistened from the morning’s rain. An occasional gash of wind from around the Hokage Rock went reached right through their jackets. But it was one of the few places where they could sit and talk, outside of the busy corridors and overenthusiastic genin.

“Not with how the customs agreements are going.”

Kakashi watched the white ashes from the cigarette’s tip fall into a puddle, and become mismatched flakes of grey.

“Sooner.” Raido spoke, after giving it some thought. “I’ve been in the Guard Platoon for six years. And she will make the Kazekage sign the agreements right on the place.”

Kakashi huffed.

The side of things he saw now, being stuck within the working gears of the Tower, was different from the one he did as a field commander, or a head operative. And he did not mind it entirely.

“You got any news from the ANBU rosters?”

He did not respond. And kept his eyes on the village spread below them, houses of wood and concrete lining the even streets. He did not want to look at Raido, and see his sympathy. Or his understanding.

Things had shifted in Kakashi, during these long weeks. And not in the way he liked.

It was of no particular use to hide this from those around him, but just as senseless - to wear it on his sleeve. They all came back from the War altered in some way. And they held onto each other, as friends would. But no one held the key to absolution. And each had their burden to bear.

Kakashi  believed there were things to talk about, and those which better kept silent. And then - Tenzo was right - he was afraid. That speaking of it would only make it more real. And things he saw would be torn out of his own eyes and passed onto somebody else.

Whatever died with Obito had to also die with him.

“I guess we can go have a beer about it.” Raido suggested, allowing his cigarette to fall on the roof, and extinguished it with his heel.

Kakashi smirked at that minor act of rebellion. And gave a nod.

Maybe the ghosts in his head would keep still for a few hours.

+

The old places, with walls full of photos and weapons confiscated by the patrons, excuses made for the sudden lack of cash, and memories of Sarutobi Asuma reciting classical poetry, were extinct. Not that Konoha was not trying to make it up, and Kakashi was pleased to see evidence of beer stains on the freshly cut wood in a hole-in-the-wall bar right behind the construction warehouses, where Raido brought him to.

Konoha was a surprisingly resilient thing. It stood through what it did to the Uchiha, through the Ninetails, through Orochimaru, and through Pein. And throwing a longboard over some crates, and fishing a few bottles of fine liquor and a lot more - of mediocre one would already bring a crowd and a conversation.

But seeing Naruto in the midst of it was one of the most unsettling experiences of his life. The combination of yellow hair and the orange jacket was unmistakable even in the bar’s poor lighting, and did not need the company of Sasuke’s Uchiha crest and Sakura’s broad back to stand out in the half-empty room.

Kakashi was torn between being scandalized, and feeling very, very old. And after a thought, “scandalized” only added to the “old” part. He was perfectly stunned, watching his students occupy themselves with conversation in the corner, oblivious to whomever just stepped in.

His kids were very obviously underage, and very obviously drinking under an affectionate eye of the bartender. Apparently saving the world gave them a pass in her books.

“Do you remember yourself at fourteen.”

He could _feel_ Raido snicker at his indignation.

“I was ANBU.”

If you scored the first kill, you didn't get to drink orange juice. And the Team would take him along as an equal. And he felt cool, and he felt brave, even if he was ready to pass out after two drinks.

“Hatake, you could barely reach the fucking bar table.”

Raido had three years on him. Kakashi bumped into his shoulder in defiance.

He was ready to leave the kids unnoticed, mostly because he had no idea how to handle this, and with the way the day was going - wasn’t willing to try. But then someone someone called for Hatake-taicho with a raised glass, and heads turned.

And the first emotion to sweep through Naruto’s face was that of wild, unabridged terror.

 _Good_ , Kakashi thought. But then the kid’s expression effortlessly turned into one of equally unrestrained enthusiasm. The other two could not react in time to stop him, Sasuke’s hand just missing the corner of his jacket.

“Ahh! Kakashi-sensei…! What are you do-” He waved, yelling from the other side of the room, for which the received a hearty punch from Sakura. And approached just a bit more gingerly, rubbing the hurt elbow. “I mean… it's good to see you! Hello, Raido-san! I heard there is a delegation to Sand coming up! Do you think you’ll be going? I can't wait to see Gaara had been up to. He had it pretty rough with his dad out there, didn't he?”

Kakashi could only wince at the disclosure of sensitive information, but could not bring himself to form a rebuke. He was not prepared for this whatsoever.

“Shouldn't you be studying… something?”

Speedtracking Naruto to a jonin was a perfectly stupid idea. But he hoped that at least that would keep him occupied.

“Oh, Kakashi-sensei.” Naruto scratched the back of his head. “Today was easy. Shifts of chakra nature within the formation matrices, or something. I memorized all of that in like half an hour. I swear!”

Sasuke lifted his eyes, habitual defiance keeping him from drowning in second-hand embarrassment.

“Hi.”

“How did the lease go?”

“The landlord would not let him move in!” Naruto interrupted. “And for some reason especially when I heard what's going on and had to go talk to him. So Sasuke is living with me now! That’s why we’re here, actually!”

Sakura rolled her eyes behind them. And Kakashi sincerely did not want to know what went down in that conversation.

“Uchiha. Just make sure I don't see you next time.”

“Alright.”

Sasuke actually smiled. His face was suddenly not of the kid who had seen too much, tried to kill his friends, his sensei, or the Five Kage, but of a sixteen year-old who suddenly got an indulgence he wasn't looking for.

And Kakashi prayed to all the gods who were listening, that Konoha would forget. That the War would be a distant memory, preserved only in speeches and tombstones. And Thursday nights like this would flow without a shadow, and kids would be free to figure out what kind of people they want to become.

“Let’s go, you two!” Sakura called from the back, her voice a mixture of a threat and a plea. “I’m sure Kakashi-sensei is very busy.”

Raido brought a hand to his face, trying to stifle laughter. The attempts were pitiful.

+

The promised beer had an acidic aftertaste to it, and was too water for his - or anyone’s - taste. But what else could be done, if the brewery literally had to assemble itself by pieces. The bottles imported from Grass stood before them, glistening and expensive, but Raido was insistent on supporting local business. The brewer, it turned out, was a man with two daughters. And Raido got to helping out the younger one with logistics, and making sure that Konoha’s Fire met its client.

And Kakashi was nodding to the story in the right places, listening to those warm embers within him, which ignite when you see friends in a start of something very right for them. He was half aware of the three chakra-signatures, dear and familiar to the bone, focused on his, the kids watching him from their corner booth - and no, they still had no hope of catching what was under his mask. Divine powers and all.

He was reminded of what he had.

And it was a nice distraction from the disappointment of not being able to drink himself stupid. Not that it would have solved much, but would have made the sinking feeling in his chest a bit more bearable. But it was inescapable, like the waxing of the moon.

Even the golden circle of the beer pint told him that he missed Tenzo, like rainy days in the middle of summer heat, or a word which he wanted to speak but no longer knew how to. He was losing something so very important, and did not understand that until Tenzo was gone. For the second time.

“Hard, isn’t?”

“What?” He turned his head, not understanding.

“Seeing how things change, I guess.” Raido shrugged.

Kakashi nodded into his beer.

“I was thinking of switching gears myself. Taking a team.”

“Oh, go ahead.” He gave a small laugh. “When you get them they’re a disaster. And then they grow up and become better than you.”

“Isn't that the point?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.” Raido smirked, and finished his pint in one motion. “So what are you thinking of doing, after?”

“After what?” Kakashi asked.

“After we rebuild, I suppose. Tsunade-sama is not going to keep you on administrative forever. And I don't think that she herself is staying that long.”

He would not escape the fucking desk job, Kakashi was realizing. And not for the lack of trying. Despite his years of practice, he could not still not compete with Tsunade-sama when it came to avoiding or pursuing the topic. And the Hokage masterfully and sternly divested all of his protests and displays of suffering, threw one bureaucratic emergency upon him after another, keeping Kakashi firmly within Konoha’s walls.

Maybe it was for the better. He would not quite trust himself in the field, right now. Or maybe he simply wasn't trusted, after Obito. But then, he went for the kill, and would kill again.

But then again, he haunted by a deadman.

It did not take long foreign shadow tracing his steps to take a shape, a name, and a voice.

First, in the open streets and crowded halls of the Tower, where he could not afford to look into shapes lurking corners, could not afford to fear. Where he was Hatake-taicho. It knew as much, and it followed. A movement in the corner of the eye, or an ebbing of bring morning light falling through the window. Kakashi tried not to think. And then to reason it away. But the turning of memories in his mind only attracted it, and the shadow devoured them like the void in the whirlpool devours water. Then it was his house. In his footsteps, in his conversations, and in the very echoes of his voice.  It screamed for possibilities, for a different turn of events, for another Konoha.

Kakashi started to wake up with memories burning too bright under his eyelids.

The memories which he knew never took place, but were somehow conjured by his fractured mind to hold the world he lived in together. And he lay awake in bed, staring into the plaster eye of the ceiling, fully aware of how fucked up was everything that he was feeling, and yet unable to stop feeling it. He missed things that never happened. Never had the chance to.

And he was full of guilty relief, on such nights, that Tenzo was away, because he became double the liar, with the warmth of a body, familiar and loved, next to him.

Because he felt nothing towards it. Everything that he could feel faded into an exhausted, senseless darkness, along with the tossed sheets, and the faint silhouette of a dresser, and the muted ticking of the clock. As if all which composed his actual life lacked shape and flavor, like cardboard, and the only remotely real things happened in his head. And he could not stop reaching for them.

Kakashi sighed. And then realized that he had been silent. And Raido was sitting by his side, watching him be a mess. And sighed again.

“Don't know if there is anything after this.”

“Oh.” Raido turned his head to catch his eyes, and the dim light fell at the scarred side of his face. “There is always an after.”

+

Sakura caught him by the door, when the evening was slowly trickling into the night, and Raido had stepped out for one last smoke.

She didn't say anything, only resting her shoulder against the same wall. And her silence was a match to his, and a conversation of its own. Kakashi appreciated that.

“How is it going?” He asked.

“It’s busy.” She spoke, with firmness that wasn't quite in her before. And yet could not hide her pleasure in that he now spoke to her as his full equal. “My parents are almost done putting their kitchen together. But I’m still staying with the Yamanaka. And I think I will, for a while.”

He gave a noncommittal hum. Sakura was on the verge of receiving her medical license, and she would go as far as the other two, if not further. And he was proud.

“And how are you, Kakashi-sensei?”

He looked at her, surprised with the audacity of her question. But Sakura did not step back. This was probably the other consequence of students knowing that they have the power to save or destroy the world. They learn that their teachers are also a part of it.

“Got full range in the right wrist back.” He shrugged. “And getting more sleep than I need.”

“That’s good.” She nodded. “You know you can always come by the hospital. I’ll see you past the queue.”

Kakashi choked with a laugh. The only way he ever ended up in hospitals was if he was carried in there unconscious. And Sakura working in one would not really change that.

“Just..” She blushed, and looked up at him, not knowing how to say it better. “Take care of yourself, alright?”

And she darted outside, leaving Kakashi with more noise and useless frases running around his head than she thought she ever could.

His kids were becoming their own people. And now they were asking the questions.

+

Outside, Raido was waiting for him, hands stuffed in pockets against the creeping chill.

“Don't forget about tomorrow. We’ll get some harder stuff into you then.”

“What’s tomorrow?” Kakashi blinked, forcing his attention away from the shifting night shadows in the end of the street.

Raido offered him a crooked smile, before dis saperai between the rooftops. “Show up, Hatake.”

Oh.

Right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and i am not ignoring sai as a part of team 7, god forbid. however, i do not believe that he and sasuke are capable of being mutually civil at this point.


	5. Chapter 5

Kakashi wasn’t planning on  _ not _ going.

Just that he found himself occupied otherwise, sitting cross-legged on the kitchen chair, head propped on an elbow, and carefully scanning line after line. 

The book in front of him was one of the earlier prints, corners chipped and spine broken in from the wear. He lovingly taped it over. He did not let go of it the moment his eyes latched on the gaudy pink print of the cover. This was becoming a macabre little fixation, with Jiraiya gone. But then again, Kakashi had to allow himself some hobbies which wouldn’t fall into misery and ash if he accidentally pulled on the wrong string of memory. 

He spent a better part of his free afternoons between different bookshops, searching for all the Makeout Paradise books he was now missing.  He read it on the way from the store, oblivious to the passerby and shapes of clouds alike, read as he went up the stairs and worked the door key, read as he waited for the kettle to boil and the tea to steep, drowning in the comfort of a familiar story. 

The window was open just enough to let the rich, humid air wander into the room, bringing in the sounds of quiet evening streets, a distant bicycle bell, and the heavy, sweet scent of something blooming in the very heart of summer. Tenzo would know. 

Kakashi turned another page over. 

No one would truly expect him earlier than an hour in, and he had to finish the chapter at least.

The book sat directly in the middle of the series. So Kota and Mihoko were having their conversation on an old pier flooded by moonlight, where he smuggled her past the daimyo's men. But seeing the wounds he had suffered, she refused to board the ship which would take her to the safety of her family. Kakashi found it very beautiful, how she found strength in herself through the sacrifice of her lover, but did not remember what exactly they were fleeing. He did not have the prequel, but was good enough with romantic plots to put all the characters in their places, and let the story take him. 

Kakashi remembered how he stumbled on those as a kid, and how first it was only a distraction. How desperate he was for the stream of words to silence the dull emptiness of his own mind. But then he started to find bits of pleasure tucked between flowery turns of phrase, dramatic confessions, grand reveals, and detailed descriptions of heroines’ swaying bosoms.

And he felt a flow. A path which did not take him to a different world, but granted him a detachment from this one, when it was ready to overwhelm. 

He wondered sometimes if that is why Jiraiya-sama wrote them. To have a story to tell which was not a real one. Which does not eat up your dreams. But reckoned it was mostly swaying bosoms still. 

+

It was getting dark out, the last rays of the crimson sun burning upon the roofs of Konoha, and Kakashi still sat frozen over his book. He did not feel like hitting the light. Its sharp lumenance would be akin to sound, disrupting whatever stillness he had earned. There was less and less sunlight to fall on the thin, unevenly printed pages, but their characters were about to be caught together in the forbidden rooms of the castle…

“KAKASHI-KUN”. The call tore through the thick air of the evening, and was followed by a thunderous whistle. A dog few storeys down decided that it was addressed to her, and gave a few enthusiastic barks. 

Kakashi’s instinct was to pretend that he wasn’t home. But he was already smirking at the futility of that. If Maito Gai set his mind on dragging him out, there won’t be a force in the world to stop him. So Kakashi knew better than to try.

He allowed the book to drop, and leaned out the window. 

“It’s late, you know..” He dragged. 

Gai beamed at seeing him, entirely unafraid of consequences. He was adored by Kakashi’s entire building, to an extent that the courtesy quiet hours did not seem to apply.

LATE, he mouthed, waving his hands. DOWN. NOW. 

Kakashi rolled his eyes, but obeyed, dunking into the hallway to grab his sandals and jacket. And made his way out of the window, sliding down the hatches, and balancing on Ms Nakagawa’s balcony, before landing in front of Gai, who in turn gave him look of questioning, probing concern that he knew since they were kids in the Academy. 

“I was just about to head out.” Kakashi lied, rubbing the back of his neck. He still wasn't used to looking down at his friend, as he wasn’t to the whole wheelchair business. Before they nearly matched in height. “Thanks for stopping by.” 

“I knew you were.” Gai told him in a tone, which meant that he saw entirely through all of Kakashi’s bullshit. “I came by to make sure you were on your right way.” 

And Kakashi laughed, light and easy. He shoved his hands in his pockets, but then remembered himself and put them on the chair’s handles, pushing it down to the main street. 

Gai stretched, showing full willingness to be wheeled around. 

“I started a new exercise regimen.” He related. “If you wake up at three-thirty in the morning and shower with three buckets of ice water, and then-”

“You know.” Kakashi’s eyes narrowed. “Bet you a twenty you won’t convince anyone at the party to join you.”

“Huh.” Gai considered. And put his hand back for a high-five. 

+

They were to be burying Genma’s couch.

Or well, giving it a proper wake, before it left for the dumpster. 

It had been around for over ten years. Ever since Genma passed jonin and could afford a place of his own. According to the ever changing story, Genma merely stumbled upon it abandoned on the street corner, realized that he would never have a piece of furniture like that otherwise, and spent an entire day hauling it up to fourth floor. Since then Shiranui and it were inseparable. 

Kakashi remembered its cool, thick leather under the back of his head. When Genma would manage to catch him between the ANBU missions, and they sat on the floor and ate greasy takeout, and talked into the night. And he ended up sleeping on it under a thin blanket which barely covered his legs, and Shiranui would make him cook breakfast as recompense. 

He remembered the merciless wear of time around the elbows, and deep scratches that went across the seats. When they would all come over to watch horror movies - the new ones, a byproduct of Mist’s rebuild film studio -  Anko hoarded all the pillows and would throw them at the screen. And then when the microwave exploded. And as everyone else ran to get the fire out, Tenzo and he ended up kissing on that couch. Because if they didn’t, he felt that his head would explode as well. 

No one was outright caught having sex on it, but the opposite was also not proven. There was too much that Kurenai was laughing off. 

The couch survived everything that fell on Konoha, but now it was just old. 

And it made him feel odd things. 

+

“So what happened, Hatake?” Genma asked, as they were getting Gai’s wheelchair through the doorway. “Had bamboo reeds lure you in with a song or something?” 

“No.” He shook his head, entirely seriously. “But there was a dolphin drowning. I only had to help.”

“Of course.” Genma gave him a pat on the shoulder and shoved him inside. 

The party was past the stage of the initial catch up conversations, but not yet at the point where a common pull brought them together to something irreversible and stupid. And Kakashi received the usual welcoming nods from the crowd. Everyone scattered between the kitchen and living room knew each other. Perhaps, knew each other too well. He could also sense the gazes sliding past the empty spot by his side, and questions being silenced in understanding, and shrugged the cold, creeping feeling of it. He could do this alone just fine. 

The drinks were between beers and sake, so Kakashi went for the stronger one. Something would lift the haze in his head, or at least supply it with a new one.

He was growing so impossibly tired of feeling the very same things. Or feeling nothing at all. 

And rubbed his absent eye. 

Helplessly sucked into the well of natural charisma, a circle of people was already forming around Gai, who was passionately explaining something about the virtue of ice water for the cardiovascular system, and was gesturing at him for confirmation. 

And Kakashi shook his head with a laugh. He wouldn’t let his money go that easy. 

He tried his best to be a part of this, the security of peace, the familiar tones of friendship. But all he could see were the first days, when Gai had wept.

And Kakashi sat on a chair next to the hospital bed, and stared at the blank space at the wall right above it, because he could not take the sight of tears streaming down his friend’s face. 

Gai was asking him of disjointed, confused things, as his memories were swimming in and out of the haze of painkillers, only to take shape around one terrible truth. 

He lost a student.

_ Kakashi _ , he asked then, clutching his hand and looking him in the eye. So serious and so hollow.  _ How do you bear this, Kakashi? _

Gai had wept. And he was freer from that most of them, because now he could laugh which his chest light. And did not have to keep two chambers in his soul - the one that loved the living and the other which remained with the dead.

And as Kakashi could not stand to step into the circle of warm light and easy conversation, he equally could not look away - where shadow with a deadman’s face was always waiting for him in the corner.  

So he poured himself another drink instead.

And did not notice how he was flanked on both sides.

“Hatake, we need you in on this.” Raido spoke from his left, “To take the couch out tonight, with all the hands here.”

Kakashi huffed, about to say something on the matter of Shiranui and his ideas of free lifting power. But then saw Genma’s uncompromising face. 

“I was either paying for the movers or the booze.” He rolled the senbon between his teeth. “I think I chose well… Just really wish I didn’t have to.”

Their gazes involuntarily turned to the couch, which was standing in the middle of the living room, framed by all the familiar people, and looking like it was ready to die.

“There wasn't much to do since the spring popped.” Genma sighed.

“There will be other couches in your life.” Raido offered, trying not to grin too hard. 

“Yeah. We’re going to pick up the new one tomorrow. But I don't want a new one.” He turned in mock despair. “Not with the furniture costs in this village are becoming.” 

“See.” Raido gently nudged Kakashi with an elbow. “ _ That _ is how you throw a pity party.”

And he knew that he should be grateful, and should laugh and bite with something back, and then go ask Gai how their bet is going. But the black bile of despair rose in him with a sharp sting of pain, and he could not choke it back. 

“Check in when I’ll have my breakup.” Kakashi said with a dry chuckle, so indifferent to his own words that he didn’t even understand them in the first moments. And turned to escape this entire fucking room, before his friends could come up with something as reassurance. 

+

But Kurenai caught him by the sleeve. 

“Hey, Kakashi.” She carefully pulled him to the side. “I got something for you.”

And before he could ask what, she pressed a paperback into his hand. Sheer awe spread through him, as he ran his hand over the damaged spine and the pink letters of the cover. This was too much for a coincidence. 

“Where did you find it?” Kakashi asked, trying his best not to look too pleased, but probably failing spectacularly, because Kurenai smiled, only with a flick of mystery. 

“The general store between Yamanaka and the training grounds. Did not expect to see one there myself.” 

“It's a good one. For the mid-series.” He allowed the pages to run between his fingers, enjoying their feel and weight. He was smiling still. 

“I’m glad. Was worried that you might already have that one. I think I liked it, despite the - you know - that part where they share a bed with a sword between them, and it actually works.” 

“Spoilers.” Kakashi looked up in a warning. 

Her eyebrows lifted. “I thought you knew them all by heart.”

“Just reread the one before it.” He shrugged, feeling like he gave just a part of his secret away. 

“Thank you.” The book sat firmly between his hands. 

“You’re welcome.” She smiled. “So Genma’s plan is that we all get drunk, and that bring that thing downstairs?”

“Exactly.”

“Flawless.” 

Kakashi have a huff. “Take it Mirai is with her grandmother for the night?” 

Kurenai shook her head. “Is with Shikamaru. He’d really taken to the whole babysitting thing.”

He tried to imagine. 

“I’m not taking this whole thing well.” She took a good swing from her beer bottle. “Ended up sitting this whole War out on the sidelines, all while I went to train as a shinoi not to hear how women cry when they bring the dead home. And now I brought a kid into one of the most conservative bloodlines.”

“Think about how the Sarutobi are stuck with you as much as you are with them.”

At that she laughed, at least. “You know, I got an offer, as a genjutsu specialist, seconded to the ANBU. They’re stepping their game, with you Uchiha kid is back.”

“They could really use you, with what passes as track mixing these days.” Kakashi shook his head. And then continued, only half-teasing. “But should that be sensitive information?”  

“And you don’t spend all your time in Hokage’s business?” She asked back. And then looked at him with some new attention, affectionate smile tugging the corners of her lips. 

“I’m sorry, Hatake. I’m really not used to the two eyes of yours. Have anyone told you that you have a beautiful brow line?” 

_ Yes _ , Kakashi thought.  _ Someone had _ .

He even had this crazy idea. To break into the ANBU rosters, figure out what mission they were out on right now. Make a dramatic appearance. Somewhere on an old pier flooded by moonlight. 

Tsunade would not even be that mad, with the hours she made him run. 

Their mutual workplace ethics went to hell somewhere around when she stood on top of the Hokage tower, spilling every drop of her chakra for Konoha to survive. Around the time when he died. And then realized that he had lived, only to lose another Kage and be struck with stepping into the role himself. Her waking up and him getting off the hook was more sake drank between them that he could remember, and Tsunade relying on him more and more. 

But he remained where he were. 

“Tell me how the book goes.” Kurenai asked, brushing shoulders with him as she went for another beer. “I might ask for that sequel.” 

“Does it  _ have _ to be three-thirty?” Came a shard of conversation from behind them. “Or just any other time of day.”

“WHEN THE STARS HAVE NOT YET RISEN.” Gai was professing, merciless. 

And Kakashi shook his head. Undisturbed, he cozied into the wheelchair, watching the conversation flow around him, and prepared for the inevitable trip to the springs. 

+

There was a knock on the window.

Faint, against the clamor of the room.

At first, Kakashi thought it as a tree branch scratching against the glass in the wind.

But then it repeated, in a pattern which made everyone freeze in electrified attention. He could see Genma reflectively reach for the kunai in his pocket in the corner of his eye.

The window lifted, and a stain of the white porcelain hovered against the canvass of the night. 

Kakashi knew the mask - reconnaissance, Hokage’s guard - but not the person behind it. His whole self steadied, readying for whatever news they would bring. 

And the room hung in silence, waiting for the ANBU to speak.

Slowly, Magpie’s face turned.

“Hatake-taicho, you. The Hokage wants to see you.”


	6. Chapter 6

Kakashi had not sobered up that fast in his entire life.

He snatched a cigarette from one of the ANBU on guard on his way out, but stood in front of the Tower frozen, forgetting to light it.

The world had titled from a blow he did not see coming. Or refused to see.

And it ringed in his ears, and skewed the shapes of streets and houses into something he did not quite recognize.

The first temptation was to make it back to Genma’s, make up a shitty excuse, and drink until he didn’t care. But then he knew that he would still care. Just with a hell of a headache and a vague sense of regret, when they will set out at dawn.

He did not know where to go otherwise. Or what to do.

But the last place he wanted to be was home.

The thought was a merciless one, and tore through his gut with an ugly, sharp force he could not shield himself from. Kakashi wanted to wish this recognition away, to push it out of sight, to where all the other deformed and painful things in him sat. But it remained, as cold and irrevocable as the chidori’s sting.

A breath tore out of him, and an electric surge echoed the quickened pace of his heart.

Currents running through the streetlights and further out, through bones and wires of Konoha, flickered under his fingertips. His body carried him. And it was the strength and the speed and the shifts in chakra nature which left him sliding on wires and pushing off roof tiles, but ultimately offered no answer.

Motion was better than no motion. But it was no comfort.

The ground still held him, and the air still folded itself underneath his steps. But he hated the _feel_ of it.

Kakashi stopped on an unfamiliar rooftop, as if hitting a wall within himself. And shut his eyes.

He tried to think. Clearly. As the Commander he was.

But this was not the clarity of the battlefield. This was the ugly chasm of all that he carried within him. All of the enormous, empty spaces in his life, too hollow on their own and never fitting together.

The moon was full and bright, and hung like a polished disk of silver, unsettling in its luminosity. And the great stone faces stared directly at him, every stroke of the craftsman’s chisel brilliant from under the shadows.

And he would be one of them in a matter of weeks. The finality of it felt like a sentence.

 

+

“Apologies for the timing,” Tsunade had said, not looking up from her papers. “But we are pushing the talks with Sand forward. You’re heading out tomorrow. Consider it your first informal visit.”

He had stood still then, hands in his pockets, waiting for a clarification or a comment and doing his best not to understand, until she lifted her tired eyes up to him.

“As the Hokage, Kakashi.”

Suddenly, the world was not itself, but an agglomeration of scattered details: sharp corners of document folders, impatient tapping of Tsunade’s pen, a weary-looking plant on her window, faint signatures of cloaked ANBU standing guard - all came to absorb his attention, while the meaning of the words spoken reached his as if through a thickness of water, heavy and slow.

“What time are we setting out?” Kakashi had asked, in his usual tone of detached disinterest.

“With the morning ANBU patrol.” Tsunade carefully studied his face. “It’s under wraps for now until I get the daymeo’s seal. But expect the announcement days after you return.”

And Kakashi bowed his head.

He had nothing to hide from her, just as he had no freedom to refuse. They both knew that. And she believed that she was making the correct choice.

 

+

Now, he tried not to think, of how it could have been Obito.

But the thought was persistent and piercing, and pulled on his sleeve and squeezed his throat in a momentary relief of _what could have been_ . Of that if they had another chance, or if there were a life only so slightly different, he could be hearing the good news from his _friend_ , and not living someone else’s dream that he stole by staying alive.

Kakashi had his dead. And he loved them. And he did the best one man could to remember, and to honor their memory through making himself into what he ought to be. But he only kept taking from them. He kept failing.

Grief, pure and luminous, rushed over him, and, with no strength left to keep standing, he slid on the ground under the weight of it, and lowered his face into his hands.

Being torn apart from inside would not solve a thing. But he equally could not do a thing about it.

 

+

“Hey, Hatake.”

The familiar voice did not startle, but brought him back to awareness - of the sharp roof tile edges, a cool night, and a shadow which hovered right on the edge of perception, respectful of his space. And he was grateful for that.

In the next moment, Yugao was standing next him. In a full ANBU uniform, katana behind her back, and a swash of white porcelain in the dark. Kakashi suddenly feeling ten years younger. A corner of his mouth quirked up in a smile under the mask.

“I gather I suck at timing..” She said, looking past him, to where the black mass of the forest slept in silence. “But I hoped to still catch you at the Tower. Tsunade briefed the Team right after you.”

“Main gate.” Kakashi huffed. “Twenty past.”

“Twenty past.” Yugao echoed, as if they were exchanging patrol times. As if he didn’t run from the ANBU and she didn’t run from the War that knocked on Konoha’s door. And Kakashi hoped, beyond all reason, that that would be it.

But Yugao took in a deep breath.

“We need to talk.”

“About what?”

She pulled on the mask’s straps and gently lowered in next to her, as she sat down on the roof cross-legged. Kakashi watched the silence and the care of the gesture, in an effort to delay the inevitability her words, which still stung like white-hot iron when they came.

“About Yamato.”

She paused, forcing words out in heavy, ill-fitting chunks.

“Ro is running the escort. And he is my Captain. And I don’t want him there.”

Kakashi didn't say anything. And controlled his expression enough not to let any of what he felt show. But Yugao knew him - perhaps, in ways that he would not allow himself to. So she pressed.

“You take hours like that when you are sixteen and want to be a hero. Not when you are twenty-six and just got out of whatever that plant-powered torture chamber was.”

And here Kakashi winced.

“I don’t know what he’s trying to do. But he doesn’t want it to end well, or with us.” She looked upi, and the fear in her eyes was the same that sat buried deep in Kakashi’s heart. “Talk to him. Because I can’t.”

Yugao was right, he knew. She was right to talk, and she was right to warn him. She had seen firsthand what happens when ANBU go apart. She herself had.

She had left them, after Hayate’s death.

At a point, she had said then, you have had enough blood. And the vision you had of yourself shatters. And you try to make sense of those pieces by stepping far away from all that you know, by folding hospital bed sheets and manning soup kitchens.

Kakashi  ran his hand over his face. How little strength he had left for the world around him, even if it were finally at peace. And how much he wished he could tell her that the fear was just a phantom, that Tenzo will be alright.

But that would be one lie too much for him to carry.

They were now mercilessly pulled in different directions, like a river that separates in two currents when it hits a rock.

But he also did not believe that it was the full truth.

“I cannot keep him from going.” He told Yugao instead. “It’s not my right to.”

She took that with a silence, peering into the night.

“You know….” She sighed again.  “I’ve heard the rumors, Kakashi.”

“Of what.” The indifference his voice told them both that he knew exactly what she meant. The great stone faces remained unmoving and rigid above them, looking over the village with blind eyes.

“A team is also being sent to the daymeo’s residence. With an S-marked scroll.”

“I do not want this.”He swallowed, and something was cracking on the edges of his voice.

And she looked at him with something of an understanding. And she did, he supposed, for her loved ones were also watching her from the other side.

“But who else, Hatake?”

He did not respond.

“I can’t tell you how to be.” She rubbed the side of her face. ”But it got to be less grim of a job, with the five years I’ve been out and Lady Tsunade in place. I don't see twelve year old kids who score their first kills before they kiss someone for the first time. And I don’t want to see that anymore. I pray that I don’t. And I will do everything I can not to … And during those five years, I had time to think. About what we need to change. And about what’s important. And that is the people around you. And you know that, Captain. I know that you do.”

Kakashi gave a laugh. He had not been her captain for over eight years. They had both left the ANBU, saving themselves from the darkness that took different shapes and spoke in different voices, but was in truth the same thing.

Yugao had also met her dead. But what she saw during Edo Tensei - that did not leave her scattered with pain and guilt, but made her whole.

And she had walked back into the ANBU headquarters with a swift step, and a light, which now followed her, gave her the strength to carry the sword again, and to care about others, sitting with them on midnight rooftops and offering pep-talks between the two shifts.

“Just…” She sighed once more, holding up the porcelain ask. “I do not know, obviously. But I know something. And what I learned is that letting it hurt is good. But not seeing anything else beyond it is a bad thing. Do me a favor and do not let your life slip by you. I care about you too much about both of you to see that happen.”

 

+

The light in the kitchen was on.

Kakashi saw it from the street, and went up the longer way of the stairs, with the keys jingling uncertainly in the pocket.

 _Talk to him_ , Yugao had said. And Kakashi knew that he had to - because, if he didn’t, the future collapsed into an absolute impossibility he did not know how to imagine or untangle. But also did not know what he had to save. Because he could not tell what was missing.

He turned the door open to a single strip of yellow light falling into the hallway.

And Tenzo was there, at the kitchen table. Out of his gear, but in the standard-issue fatigues which went underneath it, with a mug of what looked like yesterday’s half-finished coffee. Staring somewhere into the corner between the fridge and the calendar hanging on the wall.

He looked up. “Hi.”

“Good to see you.” Kakashi said, words rising in his throat and spilling out by themselves.

It had to be the inconvenient whiskey remains that rumbled in his head, that he suddenly felt upside down, and unable to comprehend direction.

And he wanted to reach forward, to tell Tenzo how tired he was, and how much he missed him, and how nothing else made sense, and to grab the mug out of his hand, and take him to bed, so they could sleep, because they had to set out early tomorrow… And maybe after they could talk, and he would find the words for dozens of minuscule things which wove their way through his rib cage and pulled in pain all those past weeks, and it would be _fine_...

“I didn’t know I’ll be on the mission until tonight.” Tenzo lied. And Kakashi knew that he was lying. Because since when in their fifteen years did Tenzo forget that he could tell his lies. That sent a jolt of chilling fear through him. Because did not know what else Tenzo knew. And was too afraid to ask.

“I wanted to…” Tenzo paused, as if feeling against that invisible boundary between am. “Wanted to make sure you were alright.”

“I..-” Kakashi rubbed his face, chasing away the phantom pain from the left eye. “I am. I just got out of Tsunade’s brief on tomorrow.”

He was lying also. And he would bet that Tenzo saw that. But that was the coward he were, where he could not remain alone with things inside of him, but equally could not lay them in front of someone else.

 _Talk to him_ , Yugao had said. So he had to at least try.

“You know, you don’t need to be on the mission. It’s a diplomatic. And you can use the break.”

Tenzo looked at him, not understanding.

“You’re…- I just can’t lose you to the ANBU like that.”

A silence hung, in which Tenzo slowly turned his mug around on the table.

“Maybe you should figure out how to let things go, Kakashi. Maybe not everything you think you lose is a loss.”

And sharp, biting anger ran through Kakashi’s gut.

“Not that you had much to start with.”

He finished speaking before he realized what left his lips. And the worst part, he wouldn't have taken it back. Neither of them would, Kakashi realized, as they looked at each other, and those terrible things laid between them in the open, in the hard light of truth.

Parts of them which fit against each other so easily through the years now sat ugly and misaligned. And that was something Kakashi had to learn how to move forward with.

“Don't go.” He asked, one last time. “Don’t go with me.”

And there was nothing but trained patience in the dark brown eyes. “It is my service, Kakashi.”

“Sure.” He barely bothered with a shrug, feigned carelessness. “I’ll leave you to it.”

And he would carefully close the door behind him, and slowly make his way down the stairs, to go sleep on Gai’s futon.


End file.
